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Masters Thesis

Interpersonal functioning and psychological wellbeing: An exploration of the stress response as an intermediary factor between self-compassion and depressive symptoms

Depression is a serious mental health disorder and is one of the major leading causes of disability and mortality worldwide. In the United States, depression is a common mental health disorder; its prevalence among young adults continues to rise. Vulnerable populations at higher risk for chronic diseases such as Type 2 diabetes (T2d) may have even higher rates of comorbidities like depression. Depression has been associated with psychosocial stressors. However, self-compassion (e.g., relating to oneself with kindness during times of suffering) has been consistently associated with healthy psychological functioning and reduced depression in the empirical literature. The present study assessed the relationships between self-compassion and depressive symptoms through perceived stress and long-term cortisol exposure (i.e., a measure of the biological stress response) in young adults between the ages of 18-25 with a predisposition to T2d. Participants completed empirically validated self-report measures including the 20-item Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, the 26-item Self-Compassion Scale, and the 10-item Perceived Stress Scale, and provided a small sample of hair to determine 3-month cumulative cortisol concentration. The SPSS PROCESS MACRO plug-in software was used to analyze the indirect effect between variables. Self-compassion was indirectly related to depressive symptoms through perceived stress (βindirect = -1.02, SE = 0.25, 95% CI = -1.55, -0.57); however, self-compassion was not indirectly related to depressive symptoms through cumulative cortisol (βindirect = -0.01, SE = 0.05, 95% CI = -0.16, 0.06). These results contribute to the growing body of research suggesting that self-compassion may lower individual perceptions of psychosocial stress and may reduce depressive symptoms in high-risk young adults. In addition, it adds to the consideration of how stress could be part of a pathway linking self-compassion to alleviating depressive symptoms.

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